...onward to this next tag!

At the top left of this tag (if you're reading this in the standard format) is a mysterious box saying "Iarwain".

"Iarwain" is a pseudonym of Eliezer Yudkowsky.  The "Iarwain" box means Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote this tag.

Below this is a character viewpoint tag, still written by Iarwain:

"Hi, my name is Character 1!  Apparently."

In the tag above this one, we see a line of dialogue spoken by somebody named Character 1.  Character 1's viewpoint is being written by Eliezer Yudkowsky ("Iarwain").

Glowfic (and roleplay-fic in general) is written as a succession of character viewpoints.  Here, for example, is what it might look like for Character 1 to greet Character 2, both written by Eliezer/Iarwain:

"Hello, Character 2!  I'm Character 1.  How are you doing today?"

Character 2 stares back warily at Character 1.

"Fine, I suppose," they say, keeping their face very neutral.

In glowfic, many character viewpoints are accompanied by pictures of the character!  Let's try that again.

"Hello, Character 2!  I'm Character 1.  How are you doing today?"

Character 2 stares back warily at Character 1.

"Fine, I suppose," they say, keeping their face very neutral.

Often major characters in Glowfic have a tagline, something characteristic of themselves, usually but not always separated by dashes for historical reasons.  Here, for example, is Ione Sala:

"Anything in particular I'm supposed to say here?"

"Nope," replies Fred Smith, a person for whom Iarwain hasn't bothered to create a distinct character!

...anyway, that was Ione, whose characteristic tagline is apparently 'know-it-all'.

Some characters only have a single image.  Other characters can make different facial expressions!

"I suppose I could, if I put forth an effort.  Let me try..."

"How was that?  I was trying to smile, there.  Would you say it qualified as a proper facial expression?"

"Youuuuu might need more practice there."

"I shall practice, then."

If you're reading this story using the default layout on Glowfic.com, the bottom right of Derrina's tag just above will have a timestamp saying "Posted Sep 28..."  Ione's tag, above that, will have an "Updated Sep 28..." subsection and a "See History" link because of how Iarwain (Yudkowsky) fiddled around to get the tag right.

If you're reading through ProjectLawful.com, the default Style selector (at the top of the page) is set to "Simplified" which omits timestamps.  Changing the Style to "Classic" will restore the standard Glowfic.com format.

If you're reading through Glowfic.com, the only way to turn off timestamps is to install a user CSS browser extension, and add eg...

.post-footer { opacity: 0.05; }

...for Glowfic.com.

I (Yudkowsky) personally recommend against timestamps, which is why they're off by default for ProjectLawful.com.

"Hi!" 

(Some characters have a wide range of facial expressions! This is Merrin having a good day and excited to meet you!) 

That tag was from "Swimmer963", glowfic pen name of Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg, as you can see from the different author name circled in red, here.

So long as we're showing screenshots anyways:

The link button circled in blue, there, is the permalink - clicking on it, or copying the URL from it, will produce a link that directs anyone to that particular tags.  (And will go on doing so in the face of deleted earlier tags that change pagination, and so on.)

The eye button circled in green sets your current reading point within the post to that tag - if logged in to glowfic.com or projectlawful.com.  If you accidentally clicked ahead in the story, you can click on the eye to set your current place back again.

Clicking on the name Merrin, as shown by the purple arrow, will take you to Merrin's character page.  There you could learn that Merrin's template is "Marian", her setting is "dath ilan", and her facecast is "Cailee Spaeny".  This would be more important information if you were trying to read or write a more complicated glowfic than Project Lawful, in which it might matter that different characters were alts of the same template but from different settings.

If you're just reading Project Lawful, you can probably ignore all that.

If you want to search inside a thread, you can do so by clicking the burger by the post title at the top of the page, which will produce a dropdown where "Search Post" is one of the options.

In the same menu, "View Flat HTML" will produce a single, long file that contains all the tags in the entire current thread, without pagination.

Speaking of which, we're approaching the end of the current page, which is not the same as the end of the current thread!  At least, we're approaching the end of the current page if "posts per page" is set to the default value of 25.

To go on to the next page of the current thread, click "Next" or "2" right below this tag.